


A Reason to Pull Back

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [117]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: First Dates, First Kiss, M/M, Press Tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 02:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15742725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Chris invites Seb on a date--at least, Seb's pretty sure that he does.





	A Reason to Pull Back

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: First date. Prompt from this generator.

“Is this a date?”

Chris shrugs, throws you a look over his shoulder. “Eh. It doesn’t have to be.”

You pick up the pace, scramble three steps to catch up. Suddenly, the bottle of wine in your arms has new weight. “I mean, that’s fine, if it is,” you say. “I just want to be clear going in.”

“‘Going in’?” He barks out a laugh, the loud, infectious kind that gets the two housekeepers down the hall staring. “You want a sit rep on that, too? Or maybe you should check my six before we get on the elevator.”

“Hilarious,” you say, your face heating. “Make fun of the guy who wants to know what he's walking into."

Chris punches the _down_ button and turns to face you, the canvas bag on his shoulder slipping to bang into his hip. “Seriously,” he says, quieter now, in a voice meant just for you. “We can bail on this right now, Seb. No harm, no foul.”

Outside, the sun is creeping up towards noon in a sky the color of summer even though the leaves on the trees--the few trees you’ve seen in Dusseldorf--are edging steadily towards brown. Outside, the air is clear and you can see all the way out to the river, to the hint of green beyond the city, to the countryside where your face isn’t plastered to every billboard, where you sincerely hope no one knows your name.

The fame thing--sudden, sharp, and it feels like out of nowhere--is getting to you; it has this whole press tour. It’s not as if you’ve never sat in front of cameras and answered questions before, like you’ve never had to pretend to be interested in giving the same answer today that you’ve already said a thousand times. But this, _this_ , is big, this is Marvel, and if _The First Avenger_ was huge, this is tremendous: this time, your character’s name is the title and this time, people want to know who you are.

It’s taken the burden off of Chris, which is great for him--as his friend, you’re grateful. You hadn’t expected, though, the effect it would have on you to take on that weight.

So when he’d roused you out of bed this morning, on your ostensible day off, and proposed a picnic, and you’d asked _Who else is coming_? and he’d laughed at you and said _No one, man; it’s just me and you_ , it’d made sense in a way, because at some level, it’s just been you this whole time. But when you were halfway down the hall, clutching the wine he’d shoved at you, listening to him whistle, it had all at once occurred: _Is this a date_? It felt like a date--privacy, countryside, wine--and you realized, one foot in front of the other, that you really, really wanted it to be.

You’ve never talked about it, the two of you; never given it so much as a conversational glance. It’s always been there, though, sleeping, like a big fat snake in the grass, the attraction between you, the little hum that you feel when you’re in a scene together, or sitting side by side watching the dailies, or falling asleep in each other’s hotel rooms when you stay up too late. You’ve wanted to kiss him a hundred times, almost done it a dozen, except at the last minute--the last second, sometimes--you’ve always found a reason to pull back:

He’s a coworker. He’s a comrade. He’s a friend. He’s too nice a guy for you to drag into the anxious mess that sometimes is your life. And if you believe everything you see on TV, read in _People_ , in _Star_ , he’s spent most of the last five years looking for a wife.

Except now you’re in the parking garage sneaking into a Beamer that the hotel has let Christopher borrow for some goddamn reason--it’s the face, you think, sliding into the seat; people always trust those baby blues--and Chris is pointing the car west, away from the city, towards a little corner of respite.

He’s humming as he drives, his fingers flexing confident over the gearshift, his sunglasses riding low on his nose. There’s scruff on his cheeks that’s endearing and a zit on his right cheek; his shirt’s got a hole in the shoulder and he’s wearing old, faded jeans. He doesn’t look like a movie star at all this morning, sitting beside you at this red light: he looks like Chris, easygoing, complicated, full of piss and vinegar when he wants to be, singer of show tunes, your best friend on the road that is your weird life these past few years; a good man, a strange one. A man you’re dying to kiss. 

So you do, right there at the stoplight; you say his name and lean over his arm and press your mouth against his, warm and sure. When you pull away, he’s gaping at you, his lips parted, his sunglasses barely hanging onto the tip of his nose.

“Jesus christ, Sebastian,” he says. “That was...how the hell can you just--?”

And then he’s reaching for you, those broad, firm hands taking in your face, curling hungry around the back of your neck, and when he kisses you, his mouth urges yours open and everything that you’re feeling--affection and fear, desire and promise--it all gets tangled up between you, knotted in the touch of your tongues, the gentle press of your teeth into his lip, and it’s only when the horns start going, when the sound of them starts shaking the car, that you remember where you are, that you’re in a car stopped in the middle of the street, and you grin, tip your head back and drink him in even as you’re pushing him away with the heel of your hand.

He kicks the car into gear and makes it through the light, barely, then takes the next right and turns the Beamer around.

“What,” you say, your cheeks still buzzing from his fingers, “no more picnic?”

Chris shoots you a grin and steps hard on the gas. “I think you just made a case for an indoor picnic of the strictly clothes optional kind. If, ah"--his cheeks go a little rosy--"if you’re ok with that.”

You pet at his wrist where it’s bent above the gearshift, scrape your nails soft over the back of his hand, and grin into the sunshine, into all that might lie ahead. “Yeah,” you say. “I figure I am.”


End file.
